tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post18766420116461609..comments2015-03-02T08:15:11.963-05:00Comments on In the Middle: Gender Trouble [Again], and AgainJeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-55104814085600203982008-07-07T19:13:00.000-04:002008-07-07T19:13:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: I am just back from actually having given...Jeffrey: I am just back from actually having given these remarks, and I want to say with you, that yes, deep down, I also agree that sexual difference *is* a "thing and a fact," while the "necessity of rearticulation" is also true [and, not to be redundant, necessary]: it's basically saying [or you are, or I am, basically saying] that sexual difference has real biological, material, etc. weight, while at the same time [we are] saying, sexual difference has to also be in a continual state of re-deployment--it is always "on the move," so to speak [or should we say, it behooves us to *keep* it "on the move"], while at the same time, it [sexual difference] contains certain immovable materialities [which again, nevertheless, I am/we are able to transport to somewhere else: even the very idea of transport/transposition/transgender, etc. implies that there is "one thing" which can *become* another "one thing"].<BR/><BR/>I read Bersani's and Phillips's "Intimacies" on the plane over here, by the way, and boy oh boy, is this book something to talk about. And I really *don't* like whole parts of it, and part of the reason for my dislike is lodged [in all gender honesty] in the ways in which gay/queer *male* sexuality dominates the discussion, and yet I can't help but feel that if I say that "out loud," I commit some sort of retrograde unreconstructed "feminist" critico-theoretical faux paus. Oh well--a tale for another day, I suppose.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-66619318970326212682008-07-07T15:17:00.000-04:002008-07-07T15:17:00.000-04:00Eileen, quoting Butler, wrote:is sexual difference...Eileen, quoting Butler, wrote:<BR/><EM>is sexual difference, “not a thing, not a fact, nor a presupposition, but rather a demand for rearticulation that never quite vanishes—but also never quite appears?” [p. 186]. If so [and, yes, I think so], then the question of sexual difference must always remain “open, troubling, unresolved, propitious” [p. 192].</EM><BR/><BR/>I would say -- and maybe I have not thought deeply enough about this to say it, but this is a quick intuition -- I would say that sexual difference <EM>is</EM> a thing and a fact (and it is the third term, presupposition, that gets at how thing and fact can possess their agency: they act because they have been materialized in certain ways through a whole network of beliefs and materialities that sustain them). Then I'd say the "demand" part of the formulation is ALSO true, and that the constant necessity of rearticulation is true as well ... and it is because all these things are true (and not because a choice needs to be made that hinges on Butler's "but rather") that sexual difference is inherently "open, troubling, unresolved." And, in her word, propitious.<BR/><BR/>Whew. This is complicated stuff, Eileen, and your talent is to make it lucid. I love how the Guthlac comes into it, and hope to have more to say when the exhaustion of composing my NCS piece abates.Jeffrey Jerome Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-88313651510909561752008-07-06T15:58:00.000-04:002008-07-06T15:58:00.000-04:00MOR, if only I could afford it. EJ, this is really...MOR, if only I could afford it. EJ, this is really exciting, and I look forward to seeing this as a 'full' paper. And, wow, the Ettinger DOES seem really useful: basically, we have a model for a presymbolic that, however, makes room for difference that is, as you explain, structured by something other than lack, structured by a bit more play. The implications for an ethics--always stymied by the pessimism of psychoanalysis as I understand it--seem pretty large!Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-73849835337690206172008-07-05T17:48:00.000-04:002008-07-05T17:48:00.000-04:00If you want to be blessed enough to read The Matri...If you want to be blessed enough to read The Matrixial Borderspace with Bracha herself sign up now!<BR/><BR/>http://www.theeories.com/id4.html<BR/><BR/>MORAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-64804562758330464262008-07-05T17:03:00.000-04:002008-07-05T17:03:00.000-04:00Oh, and did I mention that the symbolic prenatal m...Oh, and did I mention that the symbolic prenatal matrixial space is also intrauterine? Ettinger's work looks to be a really exciting answer to Lacan's and other psychanalysts' *failure* to describe/historicize identity and sexuality without recourse to the phallus and to castration/lack/cutting/separation, etc.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.com